News of the World Hacked Scotland Yard

The New York Times is reporting Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch's defunct newspaper News of the World investigated their own investigators. Sometime after Scotland Yard opened their inquiry of the paper in 2006, the paper focused their hacking on officers assigned to their case. Don Van Natta Jr. and Ravi Somaiya are reporting that, "five senior police investigators discovered that their own mobile phone messages had been targeted by the tabloid and had most likely been listened to." Two of the officers landed in trouble only a short time later, facing, "charges that one had padded his expense reports and was involved in extramarital affairs and that the other used frequent flier miles accrued on the job for personal vacations." The reporters raise the question of whether investigators had concerns about whether investigating too heavily into the paper's illicit activities would lead to their own being revealed to the world.

News reports are focusing on the Germanwings pilot's possible depression, following a familiar script in the wake of mass killings. But the evidence shows violence is extremely rare among the mentally ill.